It is better to be impossible than improbable.
It is better to be impossible than improbable. EVEN motivating the plot, motivating the actions of the characters and supplying the proper local color, does not render the plot wholly acceptable. The action of every character may be ac counted for, the rise of every situation be prepared for, the color may be correct to a shade and yet the plot may be impossible because the average spectator cannot accept it as an actual happening because of its improbability. It may be possible and yet not probable, and Melville Davisson Post put the matter compactly in an article in the Saturday Evening Post when he said that once past the bounds of probability it was better to offer the absolutely impossible than the possible but improbable. The entire subject matter of this chapter is comprehended in the latter half of that statement. It is better to be impossible than improbable. Understand clearly the difference in meaning. Anything is possible that can be accomplished, but it may not be probable. It would be possible to take the Capitol building at Washington, lift it into the air and drop it upon the top of the Parliament Buildings in London. This is possible. It is possible to move a house along the ground. It is possible to shore the foundations of the Capitol and to build balloons of sufficient lifting capacity. It is possible to do this, but it is highly improbable that it ever will be attempted. It is impossible for a man to lift the dome of the Capitol by the statue on the top. It is impossible, but it would be more readily accepted than the other and possible incident because we would present this latter feat as a rarebit dream and not ask that it be accepted as a fact. It is no unusual thing for an author whose story has been returned with the comment that it is too improbable to take issue with the Editor on the point and offer to present documentary evidence to show that the incident in dispute is an actual happening and not an imaginary event. This is a matter of supreme indifference to the Editor. He does not care whether the fact be a truth or an invention. His experience tells him that the fact will not be accepted by the average person as a thing likely to happen. That is all that he cares about The story is improbable no matter how possible it is that the thing may have happened. It will not be accepted; therefore it will not interest. Nothing else matters. 4. It is better to offer a plausible fiction than a possible but improbable fact. Truth may be and often is stranger than fiction, which is precisely why fiction is preferred. It is immaterial that a thing has happened. That it has happened is not sufficient to require its acceptance from those not familiar with the facts, and film stories cannot be accompanied by a mass of affidavits proving that an improbable story really happened. The fact must be plausible to gain acceptance, and the plausible fact is something that may never have happened, but which might have happened, not once, but many times. Every now and then it is announced that a sea serpent has been sighted. It is possible that there are such monsters of the deep, but until the fact is so well established as to be accepted without protest by all, the sea serpent will remain a fabulous animal. If you could send out a live sea serpent with each print of a film, then you could write stories about sea serpents and ask that they be accepted as serious fact. Until then the sea serpent will be available only in farce. The dictionary definition of plausible is "having a fair appearance: apparently right; specious. " The second of these is particularly apt in this connection. The plausible statement is "apparently right. " It does not matter that it is not true; that it is not a fact. It is apparently right. It will be accepted as a fact without argument because it has a fair appearance. That is all that is necessary. Photoplay is entertainment; not history. If it is specious it succeeds in its purpose, but if it presents a fact so strange and out of the ordinary that to ask its acceptance as fact without corroborative testimony is to offer apparent insult to the intelligence, then that fact, real as it may be, has no place in photoplay. Originality of plot is greatly to be desired, but it is possible to be too original; to offer such amazing statements that they cannot be accepted as truths. Unless you present such a story purely as an appeal to the imagination you cannot ask serious consideration for it. It is possible that the centre of the earth is inhabited by a race of creatures thirty feet high, sightless and capable of withstanding several hundred degrees of heat. It is possible, since no one has knowledge to the contrary. If you ask that this fact be accepted seriously, you will not be believed, but if you write a fantastic story in which this locale is employed and these and other creatures are introduced, and offer it in such a way that you invite your spectator to enjoy the creation of your vivid imagination, then the resources of your inventiveness will be applauded because you do not ask or pretend to ask that your statements be accepted as fact You say in effect: "This story is not real. I am not such an ass as to suppose you will accept it as real—but see how cleverly I can contrive fable. " Your spectator is slightly flattered by your appeal to his appreciation of your cleverness and decides in your favor. 7. Suppose that you devise a situation such as this: Miss Millions is astride a runaway horse. A mounted policeman dashes alongside her and removes her from the maddened animal. This will find ready acceptance, for there is record of hundreds of similar rescues. But suppose that in your search for novelty of scene you employ a dismounted policeman who commandeers an airplane. Hanging by his knees from the framework, he orders the pilot to guide the plane over the endangered rider, pulling her from the horse as he passes. Here is something that might be done, but it will not be plausible because it will not be accepted as a possibility. Audiences may regard with interest the manipulation of the airplane and applaud the acrobatic ability of the officer, but they will not regard the story as convincing. It is not plausible, and therefore not to be accepted. 8. Your story does not have to be true; indeed most true stories are to be avoided since you will be hampered by facts, and some of these facts may be so purely local that they will not be understood by persons not resident in your section of the country. It is better to offer a story that sounds true than one that is true, since the former will be accepted and the latter will not. When "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" was written there were no practicable cruising submarines, no diving suits that enabled the wearer to be independent of a source of air supply; indeed, the whole story was almost purely imaginative. But it was all possible and probable, and today practically all of the inventions have been realized; some of them, perhaps, through the suggestions contained in the book. Others of that time who sought to imitate Verne did not last because they were not plausible, because they were too wildly speculative. Verne was imaginative, but plausible. He was merely ahead of his time. He was accepted then. He is proven now. category:Writing techniques